


The Camping Trip

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
Genre: 1980s, Adolescent Sexuality, Camping, Period Typical Attitudes, Rated T for aforementioned sexuality and swearing, Slice of Life, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26439934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: Emotionally worn out, Milly and Eric go on a camping trip to a nearby lake.
Relationships: Eric Gibb/Milly Michaelson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Give It Time

Junior high was easy. 

Sure, Milly thought—early on, it was a big change. All the other girls seemed to have mastered the art of handwriting over the summer, their lowercase “I”s topped with tidy hearts, while Milly still struggled to keep her ungainly, scrawling letters legible. And all the fuss about bras and periods went completely over her head—but there were other things. There were climbing trees in seventh grade, in the hazy, uneasy time between childhood and adolescence, before climbing trees became strictly the domain of elementary schoolers. There was Esther and Amy. There was playing briefly on a soccer team affiliated with her Hebrew school and going on trips with the Girl Scout troop she’d been part of since the fifth grade. Milly still remembered exploring the woods miles beyond town—the smell of sweat and animal droppings among the oak trees, the piercing tweet of the troop leader’s whistle as she showed them how to differentiate poison ivy from poison oak and sumac. 

Milly glanced at her wristwatch. She still had a few minutes left until class ended. She stifled a sigh, flipped her test over to reveal her lined notebook page of sketched calculations, and skimmed her work for mistakes for the third time in twenty minutes. 

Not that it would help. Milly had never been a math genius, but she could get by as long as she paid attention—something she hadn’t been doing since school started. Her floundering on this test was clear evidence of that. Her cheeks burned when she thought of Mrs. Birelli grading it later that evening, her wrinkled lips pursing as she inked in a big old red “D” at the top of her sheet. She was already annoyed with Milly for frequently daydreaming during class—this would only make things worse.

She looked around discreetly at the bowed heads around her. Boys and girls with stony faces hunched over their tests, pencils scritching away. She wondered how many kids were cheating versus how many came prepared. She thought again of junior high; there were students there, too, all packed together in stuffy classrooms, but that had a sense of comfortable familiarity to it. Taft had just coldness—it was there in the rusty lockers, ancient gunk smothering the vents. It was there in the scuffed tile of the hallway floors, the unfamiliar faces of the student body, and the musty, bittersweet scent of the identical carpet flooring in all the classrooms.

“Give it time,” her mother said one evening while saying goodnight. Her mother was wearing her reading glasses and paging through a book when Milly padded into her bedroom. Milly sat on her mother’s queen-sized bed in her oversized shirt and flannel bottoms. She felt oddly victorious as her mother listened to her worries. A divot was opening in the mysterious desert of her mother’s new post-Dad priorities, a little sandy burrow simply titled “Milly,” and she didn't want to let that go. Yet her mother’s words seemed to bounce off her like pennies clicking harmlessly off the surface of a stone fountain.

“I don’t want to give it time,” Milly admitted, twisting strands of hair together with her fingers and staring in the direction of her mother’s pillow.

“I know,” Charlene replied, and gave her a sad smile. “But that’s how it’s gotta be.” She reached over, gave her hand a squeeze, then said goodnight. 

Later, Milly lay awake in her bed, staring vaguely at the moon outside her window. She wondered if tomorrow would be the day she stopped ruminating on her time in junior high with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe tomorrow would be the day she stopped feeling pangs of longing for Amy or Esther whenever she saw groups of girls clustered together, eating or talking or passing notes in class—maybe tomorrow would be the day Taft’s unfriendly, cool exterior evaporated, revealing a place that was warm and comfortable and safe. 

It’d only been about a month since the move, but it still felt to Milly like she was moving through her new life in a low-level form of shock. In her memory, she’d washed away the sadness lingering over their old house—the way the bathroom medicine cabinet seemed to glint ominously, reminding her of her father—the way her mother shuffled the halls in her bathrobe, only showering or smiling when there were well-wishers coming to the door to spout apologies for their loss—the way her father’s things disappeared in twos and threes until they were all gone, leaving tiny holes in the fabric of their decor, as if he’d never been there at all—and left only the nice, homey things. Really, all Milly could willingly remember when she thought of home was her father’s records playing while he worked in his little study. She’d joined him sometimes, sitting on the overstuffed chair while he scribbled on insurance papers, reading a book he’d recommended her and telling him in detail all her thoughts. He shooed her out if he was especially busy, but most times, he always stopped to listen with an intent look on his face, as if his daughter’s opinions on fifties science-fiction were the most interesting in the world. 

Or, better yet, home was watching an old movie while resting her head on her dad’s high, narrow shoulder, ignoring his teasing about her having crushes on all the handsome leading men. Those times, she just felt content to melt into the fuzzy dialogue and rhythms of movies made decades and decades before she was born. _Imitation of Life_ , _All That Heaven Allows_ , _To Catch a Thief_ , and others were all well-worn tapes in the Michaelson household. They were thrown away by her mom, though, before the move; all she wanted to take was photographs of her dad, not his things. Milly still felt a pang of hurt just thinking of all the items she’d never get back. She’d swallowed her pain at the time, though—her mother’s red-rimmed eyes brooked no argument. It was easier not to fight.

“Alright, everyone, pencils down,” Mrs. Birelli—an older, olive-skinned woman with a birthmark on her cheek that was ridiculed by some of the crueler parts of the student body—ordered. Milly gave a jolt. Was it time already? The atmosphere in the classroom visibly relaxed as students passed their papers up to the front. “Now,” Mrs. Birelli continued, standing up behind her desk, “before the bell—”

As if her words had summoned it, the bell rang. The classroom erupted as students grabbed their backpacks and entered the hall. Milly stood by until the throng had passed and she could exit with the few kids straggling behind.

Eric was staying at the institute for a little while, so she went straight home after picking up Louis, who—thank God—did not have another note from his teacher for her to forge her mother’s signature on. When she looked surprised, Louis just shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “Mrs. Turner went easy on me today.”

“Ah,” she replied, thinking of the algebra test she’d almost certainly failed. She wished she could say the same of Mrs. Birelli.

 _Vacuum downstairs, clean the toilet, make dinner_. Milly ran over the day’s to-do list in her head as she ran up the stairs and entered her bedroom. Homework should probably be somewhere in there, too—and it would be, she assured herself, if she wasn’t too tired after all that other crap. She dropped her bag on the floor, sat on her bed, and slipped off her penny loafers. Instinctively, she glanced at the window, only to remember just then that, of course—Eric was at the institute.

Milly stifled a sigh. She hoped he was doing okay—it seemed like he always was more sluggish and unresponsive after spending time there. It didn’t help that Uncle Hugo dragged him there two times a month. She remembered how glassy Eric’s eyes were the last time he came home. She’d asked Uncle Hugo one time what happened at the institute. He said that the doctors usually administered drugs to calm Eric down because he was so difficult while in the middle of a meltdown—and meltdowns happened often. It didn’t take a psychologist to know that he hated that place like poison.

Chores could wait for a bit, Milly decided after a moment of staring out the window at Eric’s empty bedroom. She ambled downstairs and turned on the TV. Right now, she wanted to drift away.

Two _Cheers_ and a _The Dukes of Hazzard_ episode later, the back door leading burst open. Milly blinked out of her stupor as Louis spilled indoors with Max, breathless. “Hey, gimme the remote,” he said, clambering onto the couch. “I want to see if _He-Man_ ’s on.”

“I’m watching something,” Milly replied, gesturing groggily to the screen.

“You were asleep! Your eyes were closed!” Louis groped for the remote.

Milly held it out of his reach for a moment, then relented. “Fine,” she said shortly, tossing it at his chest and getting to her feet. She fetched the vacuum from the closet and got to work, pointedly running it back and forth in the kitchen and dining room. When Louis complained about the noise, she pretended not to hear. After she finished, she went dutifully up to the bathroom, grit her teeth, and got out the scrub brush from the cabinet. 

Dinner was scrambled eggs and frozen sausage links. Milly whisked the yolks together in a measuring cup, plopped the sausages in there, then dumped the cup’s contents into the pan. They were done sooner than she expected—in ten minutes, she’d already scraped out portions for her brother and herself. Louis quickly finished his serving; Milly was halfway through eating hers when she heard her mother’s key in the lock. She looked up as she entered the house. 

“Hey, Mom,” she said, swallowing her mouthful. 

Charlene put her bag of computer books down by the door and said, “Hi, Mil. Something smells good.” She looked up, her face falling a bit when she saw Milly sitting alone at the table, idly skimming an _Archie_ comic while she ate. “Where’s Louis?”

“In his room.” Milly popped another forkful of eggs in her mouth, eyes glued to the page.

“You guys ate without me?” Charlene sat on the shoe bench and slipped off her pumps. She looked up at her daughter, frowning, as she proceeded to rub the soles of her feet.

Milly looked up from her book, frowning. “The eggs would’ve gotten cold if we waited.”

Her mother sighed.

“What? I didn’t want dinner to get cold!”

“Milly.”

“What?” Milly put her book down, indignant. “Don’t _Milly_ me, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The look of resignation and disappointment on her mother’s face was enough to sap all the enjoyment out of her meal. Milly took a few more bites as her mother warmed up her plate in the microwave, then pointedly stood up from the table just as Charlene sat down with a glass of wine. 

“Don’t forget your comic,” her mother said shortly, not looking up.

“I won’t.” Milly snatched it up. “I’ll do the dishes later.” She went upstairs.

At around midnight, Eric came back. The telltale rumble of the van pulling up on their quiet street awoke butterflies in her stomach. Then, she plugged her ears with her fingers. She didn’t want to hear the institute staff swearing as they struggled to control their charge, Uncle Hugo’s waffling requests to help, and Eric’s desperate, furious grunting as he tried to escape the bonds of his straitjacket.

 _It’s okay,_ she told herself. _I’ll help him later. Tomorrow, everything will go back to normal._

Well, as normal as it could be.


	2. The Swimming Unit

Eric’s eyelids were heavy when he opened them the next morning. Sunlight streamed through the open window. His limbs felt just as heavy; he put his arm over his face, shielding his eyes from the bright light. His throat felt thick and dry, but he didn’t want water. He didn’t want to be soothed. He just wanted sleep.

“Eric,” said a gentle voice. “Eric.” A hand jogged his elbow. “C’mon. We have to go to school.”

 _Milly._ He opened one eye. She was standing at his bedside. He sat up. He was in his bed. He’d kicked off his covers in his sleep, his body tangled in the cool white sheets.

He swallowed, throat dry, and rubbed his eyes with his forefingers. 

“Uncle Hugo let you sleep in,” said Milly, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “He knows you had a tough night.”

Eric flexed his fingers. He spread them out and tapped his forefinger to his mouth.

“You signed!” she exclaimed. “Water! You want water?”

Everything seemed to be tilting. He lay down on his pillow, longing for the nest of blankets in his attic.

Milly got him water. The cup was plastic. It had the Flintstones on it. Eric had seen the Flintstones before. The bright colors were burned into his memory after long hours spent rocking in front of the television as a small kid. He drank, and a drop slipped down his chin and plopped onto the sheet.

Milly sat on the bed beside him, rubbed the damp circle with her finger, and sighed. “We’re going to be so late.”

Eric’s uncle drove them to school. Eric leaned out the window and watched the trees’ orange leaves blur against the whitish gray sky. _Tiger,_ he thought sleepily. The heater was chuckling; he felt his eyelids drooping in the warmth.

“Thank you,” said Milly when they arrived at Taft. They got out of the jalopy. Eric wandered over to her and took her hand, more for physical support than anything. His eyelids fluttered, and he yawned.

Milly looked at Uncle Hugo in the driver’s seat and said in a low, nervous voice, “He’s so _sleepy_.”

“The dose was a little strong, they told me,” he mumbled. “Poor kid. It should wear off in a few hours.” He looked at his nephew and shook his head. “Make sure he eats something, okay, Milly?” 

Eric didn’t want to watch his uncle drive away. He let go of Milly’s hand and began walking towards Taft’s gates.

“I know you’re tired,” she said as she caught up to him. “But you gotta wake up, okay, Eric?”

Eric put his hand up to his mouth again. He liked the feeling; it was comfortable. His spread fingers bobbed against his lips. 

“You can have water in a second,” said Milly. She squeezed his hand. “You’re doing great with your signs. Mrs. Sherman’s gonna blow a gasket!”

All throughout the next few hours, Eric tried to think of airplanes he’d seen in black-and-white newspaper prints and birds he’d seen on television, but all that seemed frustratingly far away. The image that most stuck in his mind was that of a stuffed tiger with eyes made of golden-orange marbles. 

It belonged to another patient, a boy Eric didn’t recognize. The boy often chewed on the tiger’s ears while lying in his cot. The tiger was facing Eric, who was in the cot next door. The boy’s gnawing teeth on the animal’s soft material made its head bob and its eyes flash and wink, catching the sterile light. 

Eric had only been there for a day. He was worn out from thrashing, his throat sore from the endless grunting and rumbling he’d done to express his anger. The straitjacket sapped the fight out of him. He lay on the cot, staring emptily at the tiger’s bright, vague eyes, until the boy chewing on it fell asleep and the amber eyes turned dull.

It was stuck in his mind, the image of that little stuffed tiger. He couldn’t get it out, no matter how much he spread his arms and swayed.

 _Water, water, water._ His fingers flicked against his mouth, eyes trained on the rippling water of the pool. He was wearing wax earplugs Milly had given him, so he could barely hear the numerous echoes bouncing off the walls of this section of the gym. He sat on the bleachers, inhaling the sharp smell of chlorine, and watched closely for Milly. She was still in line, wearing a red one-piece underneath swim shorts. Her golden-brown curls were tucked up into a navy blue swim cap. Eric wished he could see her hair; it was difficult to recognize her face amid the sea of other girls without it curling around her cheeks and shoulders.

Eric took a deep breath and looked out across the pool at the window. He looked out at the sky through the faraway windowpane and tried not to think of the tiger. With the tiger came memories of his hair plastered sweatily to his forehead, the back-and-forth murmurs of his uncle and the woman with a clipboard, and the jingle of the straitjacket’s buckles. He dropped his gaze.

Milly reached the diving board. She inched forward. Eric felt a curious sensation watching her. Her arms were crossed and her shoulders were hunched. Her legs were tensed, as if she wanted to run. 

He wanted to tell her to fly—to jump off and fly away.

She didn’t. Instead, she climbed carefully back down the ladder and went to the back of the line. 

Eric felt a swell of disappointment. He swayed back and forth with his arms out at his sides. He tried not to think of the tiger with its blank, winking stare. He tried to only think of the freedom of the big, cloudy sky that lay just beyond the doors, if only he could muster the will to reach it.

~

Milly decided soon after it started that the swimming unit in phys ed was the newfound bane of her existence. Mainly, it was because of the fact that the girls were all expected to shower afterward, to strip out of their identical red one-piece suits with the Taft logo emblazoned on the left breast and scrub the chlorine off in front of everyone. It boggled Milly’s mind. The first time she walked into the communal shower with the drains on the floor and rusty showerheads on the ceiling, she hoped that the other girls would refuse, that they’d spontaneously revolt. But they all did what they were told. Some were less shy than others, but most seemed to want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

That didn’t quell the anxiety festering in the pit of Milly’s belly as she stood under the hot water. She could imagine the other girls’ eyes on her, pointedly noting the water drops beading in the coarse, curly thatch of hair between her legs and in the hollows of her armpits as she reached up to lather her hair with cheap school shampoo. It made her hot with shame to think of anyone looking at her that way; she could practically hear Mona and her friends’ whispers. _Not only does she hang with retards, she doesn’t even shave her freakin’ bush. What’s wrong with her?_

Whenever Mona, Erin, and Colette showered, their brightly painted toenails stood out against the gray tile floor. Milly knew because she always looked down when showering, and their toenails always drew her attention. They were so pretty that she almost wished she liked getting her nails painted. After, Mona and her friends sauntered into the locker room, and, smelling sweetly of coconut or tropical fruit, toweled themselves off with businesslike efficiency. Milly slunk alongside them wrapped in a towel that never covered as much as she wanted, heart thumping. She dressed quickly, tugging her basketball jersey over her sweatshirt and zipping up her jeans. Her hair, still dripping, wet her sweatshirt’s neckline instantly, turning it damp and warm and scratchy. 

“Hey, get me something before you go,” said Mona suddenly, and Milly could easily imagine her palming a few coins into Colette’s hand.

“Nah, I gotta get to French.” Milly felt intrigued; Colette always went and got a snack for Mona from the machine in the hall. She turned slightly, trying not to make it obvious that he was eavesdropping.

Mona paused. “You didn’t have to get to French yesterday,” she pointed out. Milly could hear the click of her plastic two-tone earrings as she shifted from one high heel to the other. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, it’s just...you know.”

“No, actually,” Mona replied, unsettlingly casual. “I don’t know.” There was another brief pause. In a lower voice Milly struggled to hear over the sounds of the other girls dressing and chatting, she continued, “Are you trying to get back at me for what I said yesterday?” 

Colette scoffed, but said nothing.

Mona exhaled noisily. Hairs rose on the back of Milly’s arms. She sensed this wouldn’t be good. 

“It was a joke, Colette,” Mona snapped. “Jesus Christ, you don’t have to practically call me fat because—”

“I didn’t call you fat! Where the hell did you get that from?” Colette’s words were shrill.

 _Alright,_ Milly thought. _This isn’t fun anymore._ She hefted her sports bag over her shoulder and exited the locker room as fast as she could. Mona and Colette’s argument was getting louder. As she passed other girls halfway through dressing, Milly could see the confused looks on their faces as they craned their necks and stepped forward to see what the commotion was. Milly had some semblance of an idea. Mona had only started hankering for snacks when they’d started their swimming unit. She wasn’t great at it, not a star like she was at volleyball. The snacks were a way to comfort herself, Milly figured. She was probably touchy about it.

 _At least Mona can dive,_ she thought a little bitterly. That was more than what she could say for herself. 

She didn’t remember when the fear started. Swimming had never been a phys ed requirement in junior high—neither had showering after class, for that matter—but she’d always been at least okay when diving at the community pool. Now, though, in front of all the other girls, it seemed impossible to even get off the board. The height of the diving board made her feel nauseous, and the pool’s still surface seemed harsh and unforgiving from so high up. The thought of the other girls judging her made what little courage she had evaporate completely, leaving her knees knocking and her heart pounding. This had been the second time they’d practiced diving. Miss D. said they’d do it every Friday. Milly had doubts she’d ever make it; it was too terrifying. Yet she couldn’t afford to lower her grade in phys ed when she was already suffering in almost all her other classes.

 _That’s one improvement Taft has over junior high_ , Milly thought suddenly, stopping in front of the snack machine frequented by Colette. She had some spare change in her sports bag; she could get her and Eric a treat. That was enough to lift her spirits a bit. 

~

The chocolate thing Milly bought for him at lunch made Eric feel sick. He sunk his teeth into the spongy, sweet cake, gripping it tight in his hands so the chocolate coating smeared on his fingers. “Don’t eat it too fast,” Milly advised. He ignored her. It was too good, like the chocolate he ate with bread for dinner sometimes, but better—it was just sweet, no bitterness. 

He threw up in the hall shortly after lunch ended. He felt it a moment before it happened, his stomach churning. He lurched away from Milly, groped for the nearest open window, and thrust his head through it. The fresh air cooled the back of his feverish neck. He felt Milly’s hand on his back as he heaved for what seemed like forever, keeping his eyes on the sky with his face angled downward toward the flowerbeds below.

 _Water,_ he signed when he was done, slumping against the wall. Students stepped around them, looking at them with curiosity. Milly coaxed him over to a watering fountain, where he drank his fill. Then she led him to the nurse. Eric lingered outside the door, wary. He knew this room. Mrs. Sherman had brought him here before. It reminded him too much of the institute; he smelled something acrid and medicinal. Just the sight of the light green cot tucked in the corner made his stomach twist.

“It’s okay, Eric,” Milly said softly. “We’re gonna call Uncle Hugo, alright? Just stay here. I’ll be right back.” 

She entered the nurse’s office, leaving him by the door. Eric sat on the cold tile of the hallway, folded his legs in a W-shape, and pretended to fly as he waited; it distracted him from his unsettled stomach.

From them on, the day was a pleasant one. Uncle Hugo brought him a half-melted Popsicle, which he licked distractedly on the ride home. His uncle then forced him to eat some thick canned beef stew. Eric ate a little, rocking from side to side, impatient. Then, he was made to take two pills. That took a long time—he hated taking pills. Eventually, though, he managed to swallow them through a mouthful of ginger ale, and his uncle released him with a pat on the back. Left to his own devices at last, Eric climbed up to the attic and slept. He woke when Milly arrived later that day, the creak of the floorboards making him stir. She leaned over him.

“Hey,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

Eric, lying down on the mass of blankets and quilts, tapped his fingers to his mouth, unsure how else to communicate that he was feeling better.

“You know, I’m starting to think you’re not using that sign the right way.” Milly sat next to his nest. He sat up and moved over, but she didn’t come any closer. “You look better,” she continued, looking at him closely. “You looked pale. Back at school, I mean.”

Eric rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Milly’s presence made him feel invigorated; he wanted to pull her down the ladder and grab paper for making airplanes, but he realized she probably would admonish him for being pushy. Instead, he tugged at her gray sweatshirt until she followed him to his room.

There, he folded an airplane at his customary spot by the window, content. Things were back in order. Milly had picked up a piece of paper from his stack and was drawing on it with a nub of a pencil she’d taken from the floor of his uncle’s room. She showed him what she’d drawn, and he saw it was a bird. “It’s Tilly,” she said, tapping the bird’s breast with her pencil—she was referring to her parakeet, who he liked to watch flutter about in her cage. “You like it?” Eric blinked. He did like it. He returned to his folding. “I was thinking,” Milly said, holding her drawing up and looking at it critically. “We need a vacation. We could go camping or something.”

Eric thought about the coming evening and felt a flutter of excitement in his belly. He hadn’t flown in what seemed like ages, though it’d only been a day or two. He smiled at his nearly finished airplane.

“You know, I was a Girl Scout when I was a kid,” Milly continued. “I can do all sorts of outdoorsy stuff.” She paused, then admitted, “Well, at least, I could. I haven’t done it in a while.”

Eric aimed the airplane out the window, withdrew his arm, and let it fly. It soared into the gray afternoon, floating steadily down when a stray breeze caught it. He leaned forward and watched it as it flew into the branches of a nearby tree.

“We could do it,” said Milly, her voice rising. Eric felt a tug on his shirt. He turned and looked at the spot just above her left temple. “What do you say?” Milly asked. He noticed her wide, smiling mouth. He didn’t need Milly’s book of facial expressions to recognize her excitement. “Want to go camping, Eric? With a tent and everything?”

Eric considered it. He’d never been camping before. As long as he was free to fly at night and wasn’t ordered around too much—and as long as Milly was around—he wasn’t picky. He nodded.


	3. Trouble at Home

Milly’s mind buzzed with excitement as she gathered food from the pantry, hefting a loaf of bread into her arms. _Crackers, Kraft singles, packaged salami slices, white sandwich bread. New Coke. Water bottles. Some blankets._ What else would they need? A tent, obviously. A place to camp, even more obviously. And, of course, her mother’s permission...but maybe that could be worked around.

“What are you doing?”

Milly jumped and turned around. Louis was craning his neck to stare at her from the couch. “Just moving stuff around,” she said quickly.

Louis wrinkled his brow. “Why do you need all that bread?”

Milly colored. “I don’t. Just watch TV, okay? It’s none of your business.”

He turned around with a lackadaisical shrug. Milly pounded upstairs and rifled through her closet. She got out her red jacket and shrugged off her beige topcoat, throwing them on her bed. By the time the clock struck five-fifteen, she had amassed a hodgepodge of miscellaneous items, including Chapstick and hair ties, to add to her collection of things to bring. All the while, she tried to think of a good place to camp. She decided to tell her mom she was staying at Geneva’s for the night—that’d satisfy her. Then she and Eric would be free to do what they wanted. 

Milly smiled to herself, slipping on her Walkman headphones and nestling into her bed. They could find a spot to camp out tomorrow easy, especially if they walked fast and set out early. The park would be okay, definitely, if nowhere else. Or, if they set out early, they could go to the lake. And, if they didn’t want to sleep there, they could always just go home. _Maybe Eric can fly us someplace,_ she thought, then scoffed a little. Of course, that couldn’t happen. Not really. 

Still—it was a nice thought.

Saturday dawned bright and cold. Milly woke early, thrumming with energy, and threw off her covers. She padded downstairs and let Max out to pee, taking a deep breath of the morning air. It flooded her system and aired out the cobwebs of sleep. _Eric and I are going camping today,_ she thought, and smiled to herself, eyeing the sun rising on the horizon.

Her mother made cheese blintzes for breakfast, which made Milly soften towards her considerably. She admired how neatly her mother folded the thin pancake into its signature cigar shape. When she fried them in the pan of sizzling vegetable oil, she rolled them over delicately with her tongs. Soon, the blintzes were golden, patched with just enough brown to look perfect, the mix of ricotta and cream cheese nearly bursting from the ends. “Looks great, Mom,” Milly said, meekly offering up her plate.

Her mother looked at her briefly. “There’s raspberry syrup in the fridge,” she said, and with her tongs plopped a fresh blintz onto her plate.

After she ate, Milly began spreading the cheese blend onto four un-fried blintzes. “I want to bring some over to the Gibbs’,” she explained to her mother as she folded them into rolls.

Charlene frowned. She was now sitting at the dining room table with a glass of orange juice in hand. Beside her, Louis tackled his food ravenously. “Are you sure, Mil?” she inquired. Her eyebrows knit together. Milly felt a twinge of irritation. Her mom always got that same concerned look on her face whenever talking about Eric and his uncle. “It’s very generous, sweetie, but I don’t know if Mr. Gibb will want visitors right now.”

“Yeah, he’s prob’lly already drunk,” mumbled Louis through a mouthful of blintz. When Charlene gave him a scolding look, he promptly busied himself by slurping his milk and feigning interest in the back of the orange juice carton.

“It’s okay,” Milly said, carefully turning the blintzes over in the oil. “I’ve been over there lots of times. Mr. Gibb knows me. He likes that I’ve been helping Eric at school and stuff.” Once they were done cooking, she slid the blintzes onto a paper plate and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Charlene waved her fork at her. “Change your clothes first,” she advised.

Milly looked down at her pajamas: baggy flannel pants and a shapeless blue T-shirt with Tweety Bird printed on it. “What, you think Mr. Gibb doesn’t like _Looney Tunes_?” she joked. When her mother gave her an unamused look, she pointed out defensively, “Mr. Gibb won’t care, Mom. He wears wife-beaters on a regular basis.”

The air was brisk and cold on her cheeks, the sidewalk hard on her bare feet. Milly knocked on the Gibbs’ door, then tried the doorknob. It was locked, to her surprise. She had to knock about fifty times before Uncle Hugo answered. When he did, he looked down at her with eyes rimmed with red, looking sleepy. Like Milly predicted, he was wearing a wife-beater, the fabric clinging to his skinny ribs. 

“Good morning,” Milly said.

“Hello,” he replied, voice low with sleep. He blinked in the morning sunlight.

She lifted the plate up to him. “I brought you and Eric cheese blintzes for breakfast.”

Uncle Hugo paused. He shifted from one slipper to the other. “Your family Jewish?” he asked suddenly.

Milly flushed. The question felt like an accusation. “Yes,” she said, sounding uncertain and hating it.

Uncle Hugo gave her a brief, crooked smile, so sudden it looked more like a wince. His unfocused eyes stared beyond her, sending a chill of discomfort up her spine. “I haven’t had a blintz in years,” he said. “You know I wanted to give Eric a sort of bar mitzvah? Sarah would’ve wanted it.”

“Oh!” Milly felt a jolt of pleasurable recognition mixed with confusion. “I just assumed you were Christian.” _Who’s Sarah?_ she wondered. _Eric’s mom, maybe?_

She handed off the plate, feeling more warm and generous than before. Uncle Hugo took it in his long-fingered hands, palms ruddy and big. Milly wondered how such large hands could sit on such long, bony wrists.

“Most are. But you know what they say about people who assume things,” he grunted, lifting one eyebrow, unsmiling. “Eric’ll enjoy these. He’s sleeping now.”

“I’m excited to bring him to Geneva’s tonight.” Milly had told him yesterday and he’d agreed to let Eric go, but it wouldn’t do any harm to remind him. Uncle Hugo didn’t strike her as being totally reliable. 

He nodded vaguely and scratched the back of his head. Milly didn’t know what to say next. “Okay, well...bye,” she said with an awkward little wave. 

He gave another bob of his head, paused, uttered a gruff “Thank you,” and shut the door. 

“He didn’t even notice my pajamas,” she told her mother triumphantly when she got home. Charlene just shrugged in response. She was lying on the couch with her head propped up on a pillow and her nose in one of the books she’d brought home from work. “Did you know that the Gibbs are Jewish?” Milly asked.

“No, I didn’t,” her mother replied, sounding thoroughly uninterested.

Milly still buzzed with excitement. She couldn’t resist saying a little more, bobbing on her heels. “I think it’s cool. We thought there wouldn’t be any other Jews here, but—“

“That’s not true, Mil,” said Charlene, putting down her book.

“Well, when we were moving here you said—“

“All I said was that the nearest temple was hours away.”

“You still won’t put up the mezuzah, though.” The words came out hotter than Milly wanted them to. 

“I’m just being cautious—“

“That’s not being cautious, that’s being paranoid.” She regretted the words as soon as they slipped out. Her face burned, but she didn’t take them back. _It’s true,_ she thought. _I don’t need to apologize for telling the truth._

“Milly.” Her mother’s voice was low with reproach, and Milly felt her flush deepen. “I’m not having this discussion with you. Do I need to remind you of what happened on the Hirsches’ lawn?”

 _That was when you were_ my _age,_ Milly thought, but she bit her tongue. She’d done enough. She didn’t want to start a real fight. “I just thought it was cool,” she muttered sullenly, “you know, that we’re not the only Jews here.” 

“Good,” her mother replied, opening her book again. Her tone was mild. “I’m glad you’re excited.”

There was a pause. Milly lingered by the couch, awkward and regretful. She realized it was almost noon and she was still in her pajamas. She could see the bright sunlight blazing prettily on the grass through a nearby window. “You know that I’m sleeping over at Geneva’s tonight, right?”

Her mother turned a page. “You told me last night.”

“Oh.” Milly opened her mouth again, feeling slightly stupid. A large part of her wanted to apologize and smooth things over, but the sight of her mother absorbed in her reading—as if their argument had left her feeling nothing but the mild irritation one might feel at a pesky fly, quickly forgotten when something more interesting came around—made her resist the urge. Instead, she went upstairs to shower and left it at that.


	4. Lake Sherwood

Over the course of the day Milly drifted to and from her knapsack. She decided to add a few yellowed _Archies_ from her motley comic collection. She’d read them a billion times over, but Eric seemed to enjoy looking at the panels even if he couldn’t understand the speech bubbles. Her Walkman would go, of course, once its battery was fully charged—did Eric like music? She realized she didn’t know. That flutter of excitement started in her belly again as she smoothed out the clothes laid out on her bed. She could find out when they got there, to that ambiguous place they’d make their camp. 

That place seemed to be tinged with a sort of magic the more Milly thought of it, though underneath her excitement there simmered the old concerns and worries: where would they go, what if her mother found out she wasn’t at Geneva’s (there was almost no chance of Eric’s uncle being concerned enough to snoop into Eric’s whereabouts, thankfully), et cetera. But overall, Milly felt an overwhelming sense of giddiness. What did it matter if they didn’t have a solid plan? It’d be an adventure, just the two of them. 

The minute the clock struck three, Milly gave her mother’s cheek a perfunctory kiss, yelled goodbye to Louis out in his graveyard, and left the house. The lake sounded like a good place, she thought as she tried the Gibbs’ door. Maybe there’d be fireflies there. They’d have to take the bus—Milly had slipped her old Girl Scouts pocket knife in the pocket of her topcoat, just in case—but that was alright.

When Milly got to Eric’s room, though, she realized something. Eric was at his window, arms stretched outward. She could only see the back of his head. He looked around when he heard her footsteps.

“Oh, shit.” Milly slapped a hand to her forehead. “I guess I should have told you what to bring.”

Eric just looked at her mildly. She brought her hand down and took a breath. “Okay. Let’s do this real quick.” 

Eric didn’t have any sort of backpack to put stuff in, so Milly packed his things in a plastic grocery bag she found beneath the Gibbs’ kitchen sink. She passed Uncle Hugo on the way; he was slumbering in his armchair while _Wheel of Fortune_ blared on the TV. Once she got back to Eric’s room, she saw that he held his red sweatshirt in his hands, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. “That’s a good idea,” said Milly, putting the bag on his bed. “It gets cold by the lake at night. That’s where I was thinking we’d go. You know the lake?” He made no indication either way. “Well,” she continued lamely, “I think you’ll like it. There’s lots of trees, lots of open sky.”

Eric meandered downstairs and came back with a stack of blank paper. Milly stood back and observed as he stuffed that in the grocery bag, too. “A sweatshirt and some paper,” she said, a little wryly. “Sounds good to me.”

Eric looked at her and smiled.

They set off at a brisk pace. The bus stop, Milly assured Eric, wasn’t too far away. “We pass it on the way to school,” she explained. The day was faintly chilly as they walked out of their neighborhood, but the sun was high. When they reached the bus stop, Eric sat down heavily on the bench, as if exhausted, and put his tied-off plastic bag beside him. Milly checked the schedule tacked up on the pillar next to the bench, absently curling a strand of hair around her finger. 

They didn’t have to wait long. The bus was half full, but they found a spot in the back. Milly smelled gasoline and chewing gum thickly overlaid with the smell of old polyester. It reminded her of what New York City might smell like, the air thick with the promise of adventure. 

“We get off on Jameson,” Milly told Eric. “Okay? Listen for it.” Butterflies were spiraling up in her stomach again. When the driver called out their street, Milly followed Eric off the bus, nearly stepping on his heels multiple times in the aisle—she had to put her hand on his shoulder and push him a bit to get him to shuffle faster.

She’d never actually been to Lake Sherwood, but Geneva had. She swam there in the summer, and occasionally drank there with her friends. “I don’t do that anymore,” she said once, sounding a little embarrassed. “I just did it with Christy.” Christy was Geneva’s friend from freshman year. She moved to Wisconsin over the summer. “It wasn’t even fun,” Geneva had continued, emphatic. “Drinking outdoors is only fun when you can drive, ‘cause _God_ , taking the bus when you’re wasted is _terrible_.” Her eyes widened theatrically, making Milly smile.

Milly had packed her old one-piece swimsuit in her knapsack on a whim. She wasn’t expecting to swim, necessarily, but she figured it was good to have the option. She would only do it if no one was by the lake except she and Eric, though—her old suit was faded and patchy, not to mention too sheer to hide the fact that she didn’t shave.

It took the two of them about twenty minutes to walk to Lake Sherwood from Jameson Avenue, a street lined with stately-looking houses with white trim. As they walked, holding hands, Milly spoke aloud, mostly to mask her creeping uncertainty about being in a strange neighborhood. 

“These are fancy, huh?” She nodded toward a particular house with two oak balconies. “The color looks so boring, though. I mean, beige? Yuck.” She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, hoping to make Eric smile, but he wasn’t looking at her. He gazed straight ahead, inscrutable.

“I like our houses better, anyway,” she continued, turning onto a street called Hannity. She hoped they were going in the right direction. “They’re not as fancy, I guess, but they look less...frou-frou. More homey.” She could see the lake over the tops of the trees on the horizon, which gave her hope, but she wished she had double-checked with Geneva before heading on this little journey. She didn’t want to be wandering around too long—it would be getting dark in a few hours.

Luckily, they didn’t have to. Lake Sherwood soon revealed itself once they passed out of the neighborhood and into a small thicket of trees. Milly tugged her topcoat free of the grabbing branches of a felled tree’s leafy crown. Eric stepped onto the trunk and walked along it with his arms out, face grim as always. Milly grinned. “Having fun?” she asked. “Can you smell the lake?” She could smell something salty and musty. It wasn’t hard to hear the water lapping mildly at the shore, and overeager crickets were beginning to chirp early. They were so close!

Lake Sherwood was everything she could hope for. Milly brushed a leaf out of Eric’s hair as they stumbled into the clearing. She then gazed at the lake in wonder, a smile spreading irrepressibly across her face. The sun was getting low, tinging the sky with faint tones of pink and orange. The lake gleamed, and all around it, as if planted in a protective circle, pine trees rustled. The air was cool, rustling lightly through her curls. 

“Eric!” Milly cried, putting her hands up to her mouth. She could barely suppress her excitement. “Oh my God, look at it! Come on!” She hefted her heavy knapsack over her shoulders and hurried closer to the shore. She walked on the gravel and soft, yielding soil surrounding the lake until she reached the lip of the water. She then turned and gestured to Eric. He was still standing by the mouth of the thicket, watching her. 

“C’mere!” she called. “Where should we set up camp?”

The lake was still. There weren’t any people sitting around, which Milly appreciated. There were some people passing through, but there were fewer the lower the sun dipped. She busied herself by preparing their flimsy pop-up tent by the remains of a campfire. The tent was dug out from an unpacked box in the garage. It smelled like childhood. Milly remembered her father putting it up during one camping trip or the other, the wrinkles of frustration lining his forehead and the wind playing with his dark curls the only clear aspect of an otherwise foggy memory. 

Milly stopped fiddling with the tent’s poles, stricken with a sudden pang in her chest. She stared at the horizon, now turning to the deep orange of sunset, and waited for the ache to pass.


	5. The Swim Lesson

Eric went down to the lake soon after Milly began putting up the tent. He knelt by the water, his back toward her, and looked out at the lake as the breeze tousled his hair. He didn’t like the dank, earthy smell of the lake much, but it wasn’t too bad. The stillness of its surface made him think of the glass of a windowpane. 

When he looked down and saw his own eyes and mouth reflected in the muggy brown shallows, he looked away. He didn’t like seeing his own face. It reminded him of looking in the bathroom mirror while his uncle yanking his toothbrush back and forth in his mouth, toothpaste froth foaming over the corners of his lips. The fact that Uncle Hugo made him brush his teeth was one of the pains of his uncle being awake instead of asleep.

Eventually, Eric tired of looking at the lake and began wandering about the shore, picking up a handful of gravel with one hand and slowly picking through them with the other, rubbing each rough little piece between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at the setting sun, feeling strangely at peace. He hadn’t felt so content in a while. Walking through that neighborhood, its sea of drab houses with pointed roofs stabbing into the sky, had sparked a sense of adventure in him. If not for Milly’s sweaty grip on his hand, he would’ve happily walked ahead of her, eyes on the ever-shifting clouds above and arms spread rigidly outward. He’d felt the same strange, fluttering sensation of something wonderful and unpredictable occurring—the feeling he only got when he flew—but, this time, his feet were planted firmly on the ground. 

He didn’t get out at all on foot except to go to school or to the institute, and one was boring and the other filled him with cold dread. Milly and him also went to the park occasionally, but that wasn’t yet a staple of his routine. This—riding on a bus, walking strange streets, stopping by a lake like the ones he occasionally saw in magazines or on TV—this was an adventure he didn’t know he could have, one that didn’t have to happen at night and in secret. It filled Eric with joy, the kind so powerful he couldn’t stay still—he flapped his hands vigorously and threw his head up at the sky, rocking from side to side and bobbing from foot to foot, so the clouds seemed like they were dancing, too.

After, he tossed gravel in the lake. The wet _thoop_ sounds of the pieces splashing, breaking up the water’s calm surface with ever-widening ripples, sent a feeling of sweet satisfaction all through him. Eric could watch the gravel fly into the water forever. He stopped and flapped his hands with anticipation each time he threw a particularly big piece.

Milly soon joined him. She had changed into a swimsuit while his back was turned. She tried to teach him to skip stones, but his throws were too clumsy. He didn’t mind; the encroaching night had put other thoughts in his mind. He sat on the sand and pretended to fly, feeling Milly’s gaze occasionally shift to him as she worked on making a fire in the nearby pit. He wished she wouldn’t. He wanted to leave, to feel his feet lift off the heavy sand, but the feeling of her eyes on his back was like the rattle of invisible chains. He watched the occasional bird steal across the sky with envy. 

Milly soon succeeded in lighting the campfire. She gave Eric a piece of cheese, which he unwrapped—shivering pleasantly at the sound of the tearing plastic—and stuffed in his mouth. He ate and stared into the flames, rocking slightly from side to side. Milly was sitting nearby, looking at the lake, fiddling with her lighter and bouncing her knees. Eric looked at her, wondering why she was moving around so much. When he did that, it meant he was restless and longed to fly. Maybe Milly wanted something similar.

“I’m going to go swimming,” she said finally. “Wait here and tend the fire, okay? Make sure it doesn’t burn out. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

She stood up, brushing imaginary gravel off the backs of her knees, and headed toward the lake. Eric’s nostrils prickled and his eyes stung from the smoke. He craned his neck and squinted at her. He could hear the faint crunch of her footsteps on gravel as she moved farther away. 

He felt a shiver of anxiety run through him, strong enough to make him stand up and wander down to the lake, head jerking from left to right, eyes narrowed. He flapped his hands stiffly at his sides. He didn’t like Milly being far from him in this strange place. He stumbled over her sneakers on the gravel before he reached the sandy shore. He felt a wave of relief when he saw her standing ankle-deep in the lake, arms tight around her torso. 

She turned around as he approached. “Dare me to get in?” she asked. Eric looked down, careful to keep his feet away from the water lapping greedily at the sand. It looked too cold to him, but when he looked up at Milly, she was slowly getting to her knees, visibly shivering.

“Oh, I think there’s moss or something here!” she gasped, sitting back on her haunches. Her eyes were round as saucers. “Eric, I’m touching _moss_! Oh, my God, it’s so slimy!”

Eric didn’t know what to do. Her tone alarmed him a bit. He tiptoed closer to the water, but shied away at the last minute. Milly laughed, the sound slicing through the air. “The water’s fine! Here, come on, I’ll teach you to swim!” She lifted her hand out of the water and stretched it out toward him. 

Eric hesitated, but the sight of Milly’s open hand—her palm glistening, pink with cold—tempted him with an almost magnetic pull. He slowly, almost shyly, put his hand in hers. Milly pulled him toward her. Eric shuddered as the water soaked through the cuffs of his jeans and hit his skin, sharp and icy. His heart rate seemed to skyrocket.

“You’ll be okay,” Milly said upon seeing his round-eyed expression, then laughed a bit. “Hold on, before you get in, at least take off your jacket—”

Once the majority of his clothes was flung unceremoniously on the sandy shore, Eric covered his bare chest with his arms, shivering. He was only in his underwear and was beginning to feel faintly miserable. Milly had immersed herself fully by now and was beginning to paddle. Meanwhile, he still stood stiffly in the shallows, the water rippling around his ankles.

Milly’s hair hung in glossy, curling strands around her face. “Here,” she said, coming toward him. She raised her arms out toward him as she stood up. Eric took hold of her wrists and stumbled towards her, goosebumps prickling on his skin. The water was so cold it made him feel faintly hysterical. He took big, panting breaths, blinking rapidly in the way he did when he felt overwhelmed. Still, he refused to bolt; he trusted Milly. She wouldn’t put him in a situation where he would be hurt.

“Come on, Eric,” she coaxed, her voice gentle but sure. He held her wrists tightly as she began to lower herself into the water. “Do the same thing I do, okay? It’s shallow. You won’t go under.”

He shifted his gaze from Milly’s eager face to the the horizon. He forced himself into the water by inches, slowly submerging himself up to his hips, then—even more slowly—his stomach. The water was colder than anything he’d ever known. It was the same coldness of the steel bars of the institute cots, but worse. Colder than the buckles on his straitjacket. Even as his immersed legs began to move, to try to regain some warmth, the cold still remained. It seemed to seep into his muscles, jolting them to a strange and electrified life. Eric began to feel strangely awake, as if he’d been struck suddenly out of a dream. 

“You’re doing it!” Milly was saying, low and excited. “Come on...come on.” Their clasped hands hovered slightly above the water. Drops rolled down their flushed knuckles. Eric squeezed his eyes tight, heart banging in his chest, and took a few tottering steps forward, still crouching. Milly was treading water in front of him, kicking mightily with her legs. Eric still gripped her forearms, but he could feel the momentum of the water beginning to grow stronger, to carry him as easily as it carried bits of bracken and moss. He was still hunched over, the water lapping painfully at his chest.

“Put your arms out,” instructed Milly. “Okay, Eric? Put your arms out. That means you’ll have to let go—just for a minute, okay?”

Eric shook his head wildly. Adrenaline coursed through his body; his hands shook. For Milly to let go, to abandon him, would be like throwing him into a cold, dark abyss.

“You’ll have to put your arms out like you’re flying and flap, okay? Flap your arms like you’re happy. And don’t walk anymore, it gets deep.” Milly was panting lightly with the strain of treading water without use of her hands. Eric felt cold with fear as she began to move over to the shallows beside him. He clung to her, but soon she was plucking at his fingers, telling him gently that he’d be fine. Eric didn’t feel that way at all. 

“If you hold me any tighter, you’re gonna bruise my wrists,” she complained, but to him that seemed preferable to drowning.

Finally, though, Milly pried his fingers free, and Eric instantly started to panic. He thrashed in the water, frantically lunging for the safety of Milly’s hands in his. Every time he managed to get close to Milly, though, she drifted away, and he’d have to maneuver his way over to her again in a flurry of panicked splashing. 

“You’re doing it, Eric!” she cried. “Eric, stop—you’re okay! You’re fine! You’re swimming!”

Eventually, her words wormed through the panic clouding his mind, and Eric stopped thrashing. He began to softly sink—his heart dropped to his stomach—but just as the fear began to set in again, his feet touched the lake’s sandy bottom. 

“You were great!” Milly enthused, swimming over to him. Eric grabbed her hands again the instant she came close enough. He suddenly felt exhausted. He started moving his feet, walking slowly and heavily towards the shore. All he wanted was to be warm and dry again.

He felt a wave of relief as he reached the small strip of beach. After sitting by the fire and sneaking another slice of cheese from Milly’s knapsack, he turned and looked at the horizon. His heart rate had settled, and a mild breeze was already drying him off, raising goosebumps on his arms and legs. He still shivered from the cold, but the fear that had sharpened his focus in the lake was rapidly fading. He just felt happy to be out in the open air, watching Milly’s silhouette against the setting sun as she floated on her back in the lake. Earlier, he had felt agitated that she was so far away, but now he felt grateful for the distance. After the shock of the lake, he needed time to be alone. 

Soon, though, Eric began to feel restless again. He looked to the sky and raised his arms, only to let them fall to his sides in muted frustration. It wasn’t easy to burrow into the safety and comfort of his own head when he was under the open sky. He turned his head to gaze at Milly again. She was still swimming. He blinked at her faraway figure and began looking idly through her knapsack. He had a creeping feeling that Milly wouldn’t like that, that she might scold him for rooting through her things—she had done it before—but he was curious.

He took out one of the comics. He vaguely recognized some of the characters on the cover—the two girls who looked exactly alike except for their differently colored hair, the boy with the crown who never opened his eyes. He paged through the book, folding his legs into a W-position. The panels were lit by the golden light of the setting sun, filling him with a cozy sort of feeling. As he flicked through the pages, he occasionally looked up at the lake to see if Milly was coming in. 

Around the third time he did this, she actually rose up out of the shallows. Water fell down her body in glistening rivulets limned by dying sunlight; her hair hung in damp strings, framing a face pretty and pink with cold; her eyes sparkled. Something strange crept over Eric as he watched her emerge. He rocked slightly back and forth, a hot flush creeping slowly over his face and neck. It was a feeling he’d only experienced fleetingly when looking at the women in some of the magazines his uncle kept, rolled up and secret, in one of the drawers on his bedside table.


	6. The Sex Thing

Milly was slipping one strap off her shoulder when she heard the rustle of the tent flap. She whirled around and saw Eric, his brown eyes gazing at her with their usual solemnity. She suddenly felt caught, guilty, for no reason she could think of. Why hadn’t she zipped up the tent? 

“Eric, I told you,” she said impatiently, “I’m getting dressed. I’ll be out in a second.”

Then, Milly noticed he wasn’t looking at her face, but at her chest. He looked openly, almost innocently. For a moment, she only looked back at him, too dumbfounded to be offended. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. Heat suffused her whole body. 

“Wait outside, Eric,” she said, looking back. She waited until the tent rustled again, until he’d gone. Then, she let her shoulders relax.

Milly had never experienced anything like this before. That kind of thing—the whole sex thing—seemed firmly out of her purview, something far away to the point of being faintly ridiculous, like astronomy or taxes. The one time she’d seen any sort of dirty movie was purely by accident. Someone—Geneva suspected her brother Sonny—had disabled the block on the nudie channels on the Goodmans’ TV, and they’d changed the channel to one of them. She and Geneva watched the bodies writhing on screen with a repulsed sort of interest, both of them shocked by their audacity and daring...but any curiosity or excitement Milly felt quickly soured as the movie wore on, replaced by disgust and profound discomfort. She soon asked Geneva to change the channel. Still, the images stayed in her head long after the TV was turned off and she’d gone home. When she closed her eyes, they flashed through her mind’s eye, making her skin crawl with odd, damp warmth.

 _How can that be what sex is?_ she wondered, staring numbly at her mother as she watched TV with Louis that same night. _How can that be what everyone at school always giggles about or brags about doing?_

She’d known the mechanics of it since age eleven, of course, and she’d undergone the trial that was sex ed in the sixth grade, but seeing it—seeing _sex_ —occur on television, raw and unfiltered, was a complete shock. When Geneva joked about it with her later that week, she could only blush and mutter that she didn’t want to talk about it. It seemed too private to crack jokes about, in her mind.

But wasn’t it natural? Hadn’t her mom and dad made her and Louis in that way? She argued with herself over it, turned it over in her mind at night. It made her shudder to think that that moaning, sweating tangle of limbs on the TV was what life ultimately spawned from, that that was what occupied her male peers’ minds when they made their crude jokes or dandled their girlfriends in their laps or kissed them passionately in the halls. It seemed so fundamentally disjointed from everything else she knew—the old movies with their tender kisses, passionate but never crude, and sex ed in junior high, all knobby knees and diagrams. There didn’t seem to be any way of bridging that insane gap between Milly’s reality and that of the porno—she willed herself to think of it as a “porno” because that was the truth, even though it felt dirty—she and Geneva had watched. It was impossible. She tried to push it down, not think about it, most of the time. That was the only way to reconcile the dissonance she felt. 

It had never occurred to her, aside from the occasional uneasy questioning thought, that Eric thought about sex in the way that other teenage boys thought about it. He was different from other boys in so many other ways. Why not this one? 

It was comforting to think he was different in that specific way; it meant Milly didn’t have to worry about Eric in the typical way a girl might have to worry about being friends with a boy. But the way he’d looked at her chest just then had been so shameless. It was strange to think of Eric walking around in his stiff-backed way, thinking about normal teenage things like sex. It swelled her heart with disappointment and possibility in equal turn. 

It meant that Eric, for all his oddity, was more normal than she thought, prone to all the normal human foibles. It also meant, she thought as she dressed in her pajamas, that he was indeed capable of those feelings—that the occasional indications of his affection weren’t some hopeful fantasy she conjured up to ease her loneliness, they were true. They were real.

Eric liked her. Milly’s fingers shook as they buttoned up her pajama top. He liked her, really liked her—liked her in the same way that Cam liked Mona or Cary Grant liked Grace Kelly in _To Catch a Thief_. The thought gave her uneasy butterflies, made her feel like she was falling into some deep, secret abyss. It felt scary and wonderful at the same time. It felt full of possibility.

“You can come in, Eric,” Milly said softly, opening the tent flap. Her heart pounded. She wanted to see him; deep in her heart, she wanted him to look at her again in that scary and intriguing way, if just for a moment.

Then she saw. The sun had nearly set, and Eric was gone.


	7. To Be Close to You

Milly waited. She knew he would return in the same way she knew the stars would come out. She brought out her flashlight and, after tending the campfire, read her comics by it, sitting cross-legged, and tried not to feel nervous. The wind played with her damp, bedraggled curls. As time wore on and the night sky grew bright with stars, she began to feel concerned.

Then, at least an hour and a half after he left, she heard it: the soft padding of bare feet alighting on sand. Milly jolted up from her _Archie_ comic, jerking her flashlight up towards the lake. “Eric?” she cried.

He was standing on the shore, still dressed only in his boxers, his skin glowing pale in her flashlight’s beam. He looked at her, eyes glittering owlishly. 

“I was worried,” she admitted. “Only a little bit, though. I knew you’d come back.” She extended her hand. He ambled toward her, ghostlike in the flashlight’s beam, and took it. His hands were strangely cold.

They sheltered inside the tent, making themselves comfortable. It was cozy; they were right by the campfire, which was dying down to embers. Milly pointed out that he was dry enough to put his clothes back on, and Eric put them on slowly, dreamily, as if absorbed in something a lot more interesting going on in his head. 

Milly stole glances at him as he dressed; she couldn’t help it. She looked at his arms and his skinny chest; she looked at the golden-brown hairs growing on his legs. She tried to imagine embracing him the way lovers embraced before they had sex. The thought filled her stomach with a queasy knot of excitement and shame. She crossed her legs tightly, as if worried that something terrible would leap out of her if she didn’t.

“Sorry,” she said, turning away. “I’ll give you some privacy. It’s only fair, since you gave me some.” 

She could feel his eyes drift toward her back and settle there. She stared at the wall of faded green canvas, listening to the frogs’ muffled croaking outside. For the trillionth time since she’d met Eric, she wondered what he was thinking.

“Did you go flying?” she asked after he was dressed. It struck her that they forgot to bring him actual pajamas; he was still dressed in his cord pants and collared shirt. Eric sat in the corner of the tent, legs folded beneath him. He looked at her with a lopsided half-smile. 

“I think you did,” Milly continued, grinning. “I think you had a good time, judging by your face.”

This was easy—this was familiar territory. Musing about Eric’s improbable potential flying exploits was comfortable at this point for Milly. She dug in her knapsack and brought out a wool blanket, the New Cokes, and her Walkman.

“They’re not very cold by now,” she said apologetically, spilling her arms’ contents onto the tent floor. “But they’ll still be good, I think. Now—” She gently fit her Walkman’s headphones over Eric’s ears. He stopped reaching for a New Coke and instead reached up and touched the earcups, looking vaguely alarmed. 

“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re just headphones. What do you want to listen to? I brought three tapes.” She showed him the cassettes and explained in detail what albums they had on them, feeling more and more excited the longer she went on. She’d forgotten how nice it felt to show someone else something she loved. This was probably what Eric felt when she indulged his passion for flying.

She slotted in the Monkees’ self-titled album cassette into the Walkman. “My mom and dad used to watch these guys on TV,” she explained as she pressed play. “That was way before I was born, though—in the sixties.” 

Milly fiddled with the volume, turning it up and down until Eric put his hand down on hers. As the song went on, he began to rock stiffly from side to side.

“Are you dancing or something?” Milly asked. “Does that mean you like it?”

He touched the Walkman’s buttons with his fingers, then pressed the fast forward button. He rocked softly, eyes drifting upward as he listened. Milly tried to be patient, but she soon couldn’t help herself. She took the headphones off Eric’s head and slipped them on. “Just for a minute,” she told him as the lilting voice of Davy Jones and the gentle chords of “I Wanna Be Free” filled her ears. “Oh! This is such a nice one! Sorry—here, have them back.” 

Eric took the headphones, looking vaguely indignant.

“That’s one of their best, I think,” Milly said. She sang in a low voice, “‘I wanna be free...like the bluebird flying by me, like the waves out on the blue sea.’” She dropped her hand and added without thinking, “That’s how I feel at school sometimes.” She didn’t mention that she felt like that almost all the time, even out of school; it felt too sad to admit, even to Eric.

Night crept in, their tent growing ominously dim. Milly flicked on the flashlight and shone it in the shadowy corners. 

“Maybe I should have brought two,” she said to Eric. “Sorry.” 

He didn’t seem to mind. He was still absorbed in the Walkman, rigid, his mind far away. 

“I didn’t know you’d like the Monkees so much,” she observed, crossing her legs in front of her. “I can’t imagine what you’d think of Kate Bush—she’s one of my favorites. Everyone at school is talking about her, too...but maybe you haven’t noticed. Everyone thinks ‘Running Up That Hill’ is great—at least, you hear it on the radio a lot.” She wasn’t willing to admit that she didn’t really know what her peers thought of it specifically, as she never talked to them. “But I like ‘The Morning Fog’ the best. And ‘Mother Stands for Comfort.’” She held out another cassette to Eric, wiggling it, a smile on her lips. “Here, you gotta listen.”

Milly felt more excitement sharing music than Eric than she would with Geneva—if she had waxed on about Kate Bush to _her_ , she would have spluttered in disbelief and laughed out loud. Sure, Eric couldn’t talk like Geneva, but he could indicate things. When other people smiled and bobbed their head, it was completely ordinary. When Eric did it, it felt special. It meant he was paying attention; it meant he was opening up. That, in turn, made Milly feel the same way—like something was blossoming in her chest, making her feel light and buoyant as a fresh balloon.

Eric didn’t seem to like Kate Bush as much, to her disappointment. He fiddled with the Walkman, fingers pressing up and down on its buttons, looking off into space. “Are you listening?” asked Milly. He blinked slowly. 

“Is that a yes?” She squinted at him and pushed the rest of her salami sandwich in her mouth. “Are you sleepy or something?” she asked, words garbled. Swimming had made her hungry.

Eric yawned. He took the headphones off his head and offered them to her. She took them, holding them limply. She suddenly felt deflated. 

“I’m gonna listen for a while,” she said after a moment, smoothing out the wool blankets she brought. “Here. You can sleep, I guess.” The words came out tossed-off and a tiny bit bitter. She hoped he’d respond better to Kate Bush. The rejection stung.

Milly watched him settle down to sleep. She could just see his shaggy brown hair; it was illuminated in the flashlight’s beam, which was turned toward the entrance from its spot on the floor. She wondered if it was difficult for him to sleep in cord pants, if they felt too scratchy and coarse to go to bed in. She wondered if he even knew she was angry. _Probably not,_ she thought, and exhaled heavily through her nose. She could see that his eyes weren’t quite closed; they stared off into space, bleary.

 _What are you thinking?_ Milly wondered, looking closely at his face. _Do you like being here? Are you having fun?_ She didn’t know. She hoped so.

Milly listened to all of side one of “Hounds of Love” on her Walkman and took out another wool blanket. She lay down and stretched her arms behind her head, nestling her fingers in her hair. The flashlight was by her hip, its circular beam like a full moon on the tent wall. Through her headphones, Kate Bush sang, in her ululating lilt, about how Mother stands for comfort, Mother will hide the murderer. Milly closed her eyes, trying to breathe deeply, trying to fall asleep. The tent was cold, the canvas floor chilly; it seeped into her cotton pajamas and made goosebumps rise on her arms. 

“Eric,” she whispered, squinting at him in the darkness. “I’m cold.” 

His eyes flicked open. He looked at the top button of her pajama top, as if waiting for her to continue. Milly hesitated, then held out her arms to him, feeling faintly silly. “Can we get closer?” she asked in a whisper. Her face was beginning to warm. “Aren’t you cold?” It was beginning to sound more like a plea. _Please be cold. I want to be close to you._ Milly’s heart thudded in her ears. 

~

One of the buttons on Milly’s pajama top was winking faintly. Eric stared at it. He hadn’t thought of the stuffed tiger from the institute since yesterday, but now the image flooded his mind, goosebumps prickling on his skin. He shut his eyes tight. He wasn’t at the institute, not now; he’d flown just an hour ago, smelled the sweet scent of the pine trees’ sap, breathed in moisture from the clouds high above. He was with Milly. Nothing could hurt him.

Milly was murmuring something, lifting her arms toward him in the dark. His limbs were heavy, but he raised his hand to meet hers anyway. He closed his eyes, content, ready to sleep—but then Milly shifted closer, pajamas rustling. Her free hand touched his shoulder. Her face loomed so close that Eric could see the acne around her temples and chin, and her long dark eyelashes. Her breath was warm on his lips and chin. He looked at the wispy baby hairs springing from her hairline, then at the tip of her nose. He wasn’t sure where to rest his eyes. She was so close. It made him feel the same trembling, shivering feeling he felt when he looked down from his rooftop and realized just how far away he was from the ground.

Milly gently tugged him closer, and he lowered his head into the crook of her neck. The feeling of her chin resting atop his head jogged a jumble of half-formed memories: the warm scent of formula, long, elegant fingers stroking his bare back, a song piping softly through a record player. Eric relaxed, nestling into her neck; he wanted to burrow into this cloud of newfound comfort and never come out. He could feel Milly’s measured breathing as she stroked his hair, and it wasn’t long before the repetitive movement of her fingers soothed him into sleep.

~

Milly was surprised when Eric first moved closer to her, but when he snuggled his head into the crook of her neck, she felt a rush of affection. It was a gesture wholly lacking self-consciousness, as if it was completely natural, the last piece fitting into a puzzle. Milly had been worried—just a little—when Eric first leaned into her arms, because she couldn’t help but remember the way he’d stared at her chest earlier. She waited, wondering if he would make some sort of move, but nothing happened. It seemed like Eric just wanted to sleep. Relieved, Milly relaxed, her thoughts turning to other things. She enjoyed the soft weight of his head on her neck. She could hear his gentle breathing. He could probably hear her heartbeat. The thought felt intimate, but in a nice way.

 _When was the last time I cuddled with someone?_ she wondered. Her mother and Louis came instantly to mind. They often watched sitcoms after dinner, sitting comfortably entwined on the couch, while she washed dishes in the kitchen. It was hard to remember the last time her mom had cuddled with her. All she could think of was how she used to lean on her father’s shoulder while they watched movies. 

A lump came into Milly’s throat. It’d been so long since she’d been held in that familiar, loving way. Hell, the last time she could think of anyone giving her a hug, a real, meaningful one, was probably when sitting shiva. Esther and Amy had awkwardly embraced her before they left; she still remembered the telltale whiff of Amy’s apple-scented body wash. Milly felt a sting of resentment toward her mother. She was so distant now, so busy with work. It was Louis, being eight, who was presumed to need that kind of comfort, not her. Not the high school freshman—no, she was supposed to be over that kind of thing. Even so, the thought still nagged at her—what kind of mom didn’t hug her daughter, even if she _did_ argue with her sometimes?

 _I’m like a ghost,_ Milly thought, staring at the tent ceiling. The thought was faintly ridiculous, she knew, but it felt true, and that was all that mattered. Her stillborn argument with her mother over the mezuzah came to mind, as did the school showers after phys ed. Was anyone really judging her for her body hair after all? Or did she just want someone as popular and put-together as Mona to notice her in a way unrelated to her relationship with Eric? Tears gathered in the corners of Milly’s eyes; her face began to heat, and her vision blurred. _No one really touches me. No one really talks to me. It’s like I’m not even there._

The thoughts, mean and self-pitying all at once, clustered in her mind like storm clouds signaling rain. She was just about to let the tears brimming in her eyes fall when she realized where she was—Eric was stirring in his sleep, undoubtedly disturbed by all her sniffling. 

_What about Eric?_ Milly asked herself—patient, as if with a little child. _He sees you. He likes you._ It wasn’t the same as having friends like Mona, but the thought still eased the bitterness of her thoughts. She stroked the top of his head with one trembling hand; his light brown hair was soft and still slightly damp from the lake. Eric relaxed visibly under her fingertips, and Milly felt her heart swell with affection and sudden resolve. _He_ was there, present, warm. _He_ was cuddling her in his own hesitant, unpracticed way. He wasn’t holding her, exactly—not in the way her father did—but he was leaning on her, just as she leaned on him.

Milly blinked the tears away. She didn’t need to be held. She and Eric were holding each other. That was enough.

She shut her eyes, matched the rhythm of his breathing, and eventually fell asleep.


	8. Home Again, Home Again

The first thing Eric realized when he woke was that it was still dark. The second thing was that Milly’s arm felt particularly heavy slung across his chest. He disentangled himself from her and sat up, blinking sleepily at his surroundings. Once his eyes focused, he recognized where he was. He looked at Milly. Her hair fanned out behind her in a mass of tangled curls, exposing the pale moon of her face. Her mouth hung faintly agape, and her eyelashes quivered. Drool glistened on her chin. 

It was early morning, he realized this when he emerged from the tent and saw that the sky was gradually lightening. He could hear the occasional snatches of birdsong coming from the nearby trees, but those were few and far between. For the most part, all was dim and gray and silent.

When he looked at the fire pit, Eric saw that he and Milly’s campfire had died down in the night, reduced to a bundle of cold, charred wood. He nudged one of the blackened logs with his toe—he’d taken off his shoes to sleep and was only wearing a pair of graying socks—then lifted his nose to the sky. He inhaled deeply, lungs swelling with cold morning air. He’d flown a little bit last night to ease the strange, fevered feeling he felt when he saw Milly come in from the water last evening—that and the strange but pleasurable burning sensation in his lower belly when he peered in on her in the tent, knowing she was about to undress. Her rejection, the look of shock in her eyes, had confused him, so he’d flown away to think. Eventually, the sights and sounds of the open sky eased the ache he felt, and he eventually forgot about it. When things confused Eric, it was easier to let them drop out of his mind than to try to coax answers out of Milly or his uncle—he knew from experience it never worked, that his gestures or grunts would only confuse them in turn. Getting angry never helped, either—it only made him tired. Forgetting was easier.

Eric was itching to do fly again, this time to really bask in the budding morning. The sky called to him, gentle but insistent. His arms lifted, but he stayed rooted to the ground. _Milly,_ he reminded himself, sitting down on the lake shore. He knew what it was like to wake up alone. He’d spent countless days waking up to nothing but the slow tick of the clock in the kitchen, the house feeling so empty it might as well have been, with his uncle either unconscious or too drunk to do anything but stare glassily at the television.

After spending a few moments swaying with arms thrust stiffly out, immersed in his thoughts, Eric returned to reality. His stomach was growling. He went back to the tent, carefully creeping back inside. He looked at Milly; she’d thrown one arm over her face, and her mouth was now closed, but she was still asleep. Eric didn’t mind. With a bit of difficulty—his fingers were too clumsy and unpracticed to do it with ease—he popped the tab on his unopened New Coke. He started a little at the sound, then looked at Milly, worried that he’d awakened her.

She groaned and sat up. “Eric?” she mumbled, rubbing one of her eyes with the palm of her hand. One of her pajama sleeves had rolled up in the night and now bagged loosely around her elbow. “Oh, my God. My _back_.” She arched her spine, a hand groping the area of her tailbone. Her mouth was contorted and her brows were furrowed—she was in pain, Eric realized. “I guess next time we should bring sleeping bags,” she grumbled.

They breakfasted on slices of Kraft cheese, salami, and sandwich bread by the fire pit, the morning wind tousling their hair. Eric drank his lukewarm Coke and listened to Milly talk while he watched the lake ripple in the wind. After a short time, Milly retrieved her topcoat and his red sweatshirt from the tent, and they huddled side by side, trying to keep warm. Milly often interrupted her monologue to spit out strands of hair that whipped into her mouth due to the wind. Eric, intrigued by the way her nose wrinkled and her eyes pulled up at the corners, copied her. 

“You’re mocking me,” she complained, but she was laughing. “I don’t really look that dumb, do I?”

Eric smiled. Sometimes, he couldn’t help it; it was a newly wrought instinct. It meant all sorts of things: it meant “yes” or “I’m listening” or “you’re my friend”—which, of course, when dressed down, really just meant “I love you.”

~

As their meal began to wind down, so did their breakfast. As the sun rose, tinging the sky with orange, she told Eric about her past forays into the wilderness. “Our Scout leader was this lady, Miss Ryan,” she enthused between bites of bread. “She was really...I mean, she dressed like a man and had a man’s haircut, so everyone thought she was—” She lowered her voice to a whisper— “a lesbian.” She added quickly, at a normal volume, “I didn’t mind or anything. I mean, we didn’t even really _know_ , we just assumed _._ And Mom says without lesbians, women wouldn’t be able to own credit cards, so...well, anyway. It was a really fun time. Miss Ryan really knew what she was talking about. And since Esther and Amy—my friends from my old neighborhood—were in my troop, we used to try to earn all our badges together. The wilderness badge is the one I remember the most, because the woods we used to camp in were so _pretty_. In the morning, in the fall, the leaves were all golden and orange and—I can’t explain it, it was just beautiful. I don’t remember getting the other badges that well—which is kinda funny, I guess, ‘cause Esther and Amy and I really worked hard to get them. Like, they were a little corny and we all knew it, but we still worked _really_ hard.” 

Milly stopped to take a drink from her water bottle, crinkling the plastic. She’d thrown away her Girl Scouts vest when they were packing to move. Amy and Esther had stopped talking to her since her dad’s passing—they’d cut off all contact, pretty much, since sitting shiva for him—and the vest suddenly seemed stupid and childish and not worth the time they’d invested in it. She didn’t mention this to Eric.

She shredded more bread. She didn’t know what to talk about next, but she could sense he was waiting for her to continue. So she talked about school. It was a well that never ran dry. 

“It’s so stupid,” she railed, standing up and beginning to pace, gravel crunching. “Why do we need to shower in the first place? I don’t see why we can’t just put on deodorant like always! I don’t mind smelling like chlorine. Really!”

Eric watched her pace as he drank the dregs of his Coke.

“I feel like such a coward,” she lamented, lowering into a crouch by his side. “I just feel like my heart’s being squeezed every time I have to go on that stupid diving board. I just _freeze_. And Mona and Erin and Colette...they can dive, they all shower, and they shave, and _they_ do it fine. So why can’t I? What’s _wrong_ with me, Eric?”

Of course, he didn’t answer. He just stared at her, brows furrowed.

“I guess you wouldn’t know,” said Milly ruefully. She thought of the institute and drunk, unreliable Uncle Hugo. Suddenly guilty, she added, “I guess I shouldn’t complain. I don’t have it that bad.” She paused, then patted his hand. “You know,” she added, hesitant, “if you ever want to complain to me, I’m all ears.”

Eric turned his head to gaze out onto the lake. For a moment, Milly envisioned him opening his mouth and spilling all the things he was thinking, verbally unraveling the faraway look in his eyes. He didn’t, of course. Instead, he put his arms out and pretended to fly. 

Milly looked at the sky, tucking a few curls behind her ear. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and the wind had died down completely. She hoped it would pick up again—she hadn’t brought clothes suitable for hot weather. She felt a little sorry for Eric, who’d been wearing his wrinkled clothes all day and night and would now have to wear them until he got home, but he didn’t seem to mind.

She then went inside the tent, zipped the flap, and dressed. She’d brought a collared shirt striped with gray, purple, and white—she pulled that over a long-sleeved blue T-shirt with an old stain on the chest. It struck her that she’d love a shower, and then suddenly realized that her mother, if she were home, would be suspicious as to why she smelled like a lake. _Shit._ She hadn’t thought of that.

Maybe, she thought as she zipped up yesterday’s jeans, they could shower at Eric’s. That might work.

She pulled down their tent, feeling a little sad as she put it away. _Bye, tent,_ she thought. _Maybe we’ll bring you out of the garage again someday._ When, she didn’t know. She couldn’t see her mom or Louis wanting to go camping anytime soon. 

While she packed, she heard the telltale splashes of Eric throwing gravel in the lake, the crunch of his ambling footsteps as he wandered around. “Hey, come help,” she called, and he obeyed. He began putting their leftover food in the knapsack, sneaking the occasional Kraft single into his mouth as he worked.

They left Lake Sherwood soon after, the sunlight slanting through the trees, and trekked back to through the fancy neighborhood. There were some kids—probably eleven or twelve, Milly judged—on bikes on one of the avenues. They rode in idle circles, restless on a Saturday morning. When they passed, the kids stared at Eric, gazes judgemental—he was looking at the sky, Milly pulling him along by the hand. She flushed, half with anger and half with embarrassment. “Assholes,” she hissed under her breath to Eric, squeezing his hand. She relished in turning at the street corner. 

The bus was crowded with senior citizens. Milly suspected they were either going to a grocery store or coming back from one, as a lot of them held full brown bags in their laps. An elderly black woman wearing thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses, was sitting in the seat across from theirs; she offered Eric a dusty-looking peppermint as if he were a young child, hand quivering with age. He took it and unwrapped it without pause, slipping it into his mouth. When Milly thanked her, the lady smiled sweetly.

“Your uncle really should lock the door,” she told Eric as they stepped over the threshold of the Gibb house. _I’ve must have said something like that a hundred times by now,_ she thought. The house was dim, as usual, the curtains drawn over all the windows. Milly heard snoring emanating from the living room. When she peered around the corner, she saw Eric’s uncle slumped in an armchair. There was a thin green blanket thrown over his skinny legs; a mostly empty beer bottle balancing on one of the chair’s arms. Milly quietly followed Eric up the stairs.

“I’m going to shower, okay?” she told Eric once they were in his bedroom. “Just to rinse off. I’ll be right back.” She paused. “If your uncle wakes up...uh...well. Hopefully he won’t.” She took a deep breath and, before she lost her nerve, marched herself to the Gibbs’ bathroom.

It was a small bathroom, just like the Michaelsons’. There was a faint blue smear in the sink, but whether it was toothpaste or mouthwash, Milly wasn’t sure. The baby blue shower curtain was patterned with yellow ducks and soap bubbles. It looked like it’d been there since Eric was a little kid—maybe since he’d first moved in when he was five. There was hair in the shower drain, which made her stomach clench a little. She wiped it up with toilet paper and tried not to think about when the tub was last cleaned, then showered and dressed as quickly as she could. When she got back to Eric’s room, he was throwing a paper airplane out the window. He looked around when she arrived. Something dawned on her. “You should shower, too,” she said. “Be right back.”

Waking Eric’s uncle wasn’t easy. Milly had to practically shake his shoulders to get him to stir. “Mr. Gibb,” she told him once he’d opened her eyes, “Eric’s back from Geneva’s. Um, we took a trip to the lake, so he needs a shower.” It felt strange and condescending to talk about Eric this way. Maybe she was underestimating him—maybe he could shower by himself. She thought again of the way he’d looked at her in the tent, and felt her cheeks burn.

“He swam?” Uncle Hugo’s voice was groggy. He squinted sleepily in her direction.

“Uh, yeah. Just a bit. I held his hands—”

He made an appreciative sound. “That’s great, Milly. Wonderful.” He sounded genuine, but his eyes were already drifting to the television, which was broadcasting an episode of some daytime soap.

“He needs a shower,” Milly repeated after a moment, hands twining together. Talking to Eric’s uncle made her feel nervous. She was never sure what to say, and he always seemed so out of it. He was unlike any other adult she ever knew—then again, she thought wryly, it wasn’t like she knew many alcoholics. 

Uncle Hugo, eyes flicking away from the TV, exhaled heavily. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get to it.” He swallowed the dregs of his beer, then added, sounding glum, “He doesn’t like it—showering. It gets him very upset.”

“Oh.” Milly didn’t know what to say. She watched as he stood up and made his way to the stairs, threadbare slippers hissing and scuffing against the floorboards. Then, remembering something, she darted past him, beating him to the foot of the staircase. Uncle Hugo blinked at her, as if wondering how she got there before him. “If it’s okay, Mr. Gibb, I’d like to go say goodbye,” she said in a rush.

He wrinkled his eyebrows, looking mildly puzzled. “Of course. Go ahead.”

When she entered Eric’s room, she saw he was standing up, his stack of paper abandoned. “You heard your uncle, huh?” she said, surprised. “Are you okay?”

He gazed past her at the doorway, eyes wide. “I have to go now, Eric,” Milly said, glancing at her watch. “My mom’s probably wondering where I am.” She walked closer, taking his hands in hers. He didn’t seem to be listening. “Okay?” She searched his face. Suddenly, it clicked. Of course. He’d heard her and Uncle Hugo downstairs; he knew a shower was inevitable, and he was nervous about it.

“It’ll be okay,” Milly told him. “Don’t worry, Eric. It’ll be over soon.” She squeezed his hands, uncertain of what to do next. She didn’t want their trip to end like this, with him clammy and scared and her unsure of what to say. She wanted to muster a better goodbye than that. 

“I had fun today,” she said after a pause. “Yesterday, too. It was really nice spending time with you, Eric.”

She could hear his uncle coming up the stairs, steps plodding and heavy. “Good luck,” she said, and, before she lost her nerve, leaned in and kissed Eric’s cheek. Then she slipped out of the room, her heart jackhammering in her chest. She hurried out of the Gibbs’ house and down the sidewalk to her own. 

“Where’ve _you_ been?”

Milly jumped, grasping her knapsack’s strap tight. She looked up and saw Louis; he was sitting on his Big Wheel in their driveway. Max trotted down to greet her, and Milly followed him back to Louis, petting his black-and-white fur. “At Geneva’s,” she answered, still a little breathless. “Didn’t Mom tell you?”

Louis’s eyes narrowed. “You came out of Eric’s house.”

“I was dropping him off.” She grabbed his shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Hey. Good morning, by the way.”

“Morning,” he mumbled, waving her away. 

After putting the leftover food and the tent away as surreptitiously as possible, Milly found her mother upstairs. She was in her bedroom. “Hi,” Milly said. “I’m home.”

Charlene didn’t look up from making her bed. “Hi, Mil. You have fun at Geneva’s?” She smoothed and patted the wrinkles out of her coverlet as she spoke. Milly she was still in her pajamas. That was unusual for this time of day.

“Yeah,” she said. “Are you going to the library today?”

Charlene shrugged. “I might. I was thinking of taking it easy.” She sighed and ran a hand through her unbrushed hair. “It was a hard week.”

“Mr. Grant running you ragged?” Milly crossed her arms, sympathetic.

“You know it.” Charlene met her daughter’s eyes, and—as if realizing she was home for the first time—straightened up and held her arms open. “C’mere,” she said.

Milly stayed put. “I’m sorry,” she blurted. It was almost an instinct; seeing her mother standing there, looking so warm and loving and disheveled, made the words slip out.

Charlene walked over to her and hugged her tight. “I was wondering when you were going to say that,” she admitted. “It’s not like you to wait so long.” She added, a teasing edge to her voice, “I was thinking it’d happen before you left, at least.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Milly mumbled, face pressed against her shoulder.

“Oh, Mil. You’re just a teenager.” Charlene lifted her head from her shoulder and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “There’s nothing wrong with being angry, honey. You don’t have to apologize for that. Calling your mom ‘paranoid,’ though….”

Her voice was light, but still Milly winced. “I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again,” she said. “But…” Her next few words were hesitant. “Can we talk? About the mezuzah, I mean?”

Charlene’s dark eyes searched her own blue ones. “I didn’t know you cared so much,” she said gently.

Milly hesitated. She resisted the urge to play with her hair. “Dad would have wanted it,” she said after a moment, voice slow and halting. The words were a struggle to get out. Talking about her father was hard, period, but it was even more difficult bringing him up to her mother. “I think...not everything has to change just ‘cause we’re in a new place.”

“Well,” Charlene said after a pause, “I guess we can talk about it. Okay?”

Milly smiled, avoiding her mother’s gaze. Suddenly, she felt the mood was getting too heavy, drifting too far towards dark territory. “Geneva’s not an antisemite,” she joked. “If you were worried or something.”

Charlene frowned, taken aback. “Why would I be worried about Geneva?”

“I just meant,” Milly wheedled, wiggling her eyebrows, “if you wanted an example of a _good_ gentile—”

“Oh, stop it,” Charlene laughed, swatting her lightly. There was a small, comfortable silence as mother and daughter looked each other over in mutual appreciation. Then Charlene said, her voice fond, “I’m glad you’re home, Mil.”

Milly smiled back. “Me, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was my second attempt at a multi-chapter fic! It's a little shaggy, I think, but I'm glad it's finished. It was a little out of my comfort zone to try to confront the potential psychosexual aspect of Milly and Eric's feelings for each other, but I thought it'd be interesting to try. That's just as much apart of the teenage experience as feeling lonely and misunderstood, (which both Milly and Eric have felt in spades at this point), after all. I hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments are very much appreciated!


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